By Raul Romanutti, council member and project manager at Parity Technologies
The new bounty extension in both networks enables curators to independently provide funds for projects that bring value. With everything happening in the chain, it’s an efficient way to manage funding, empower the Polkadot ecosystem, and give more autonomy to those who curate its development. The new enlargement acts as a budgetary mechanism designed to help councils scale their tasks.
Current mechanisms
In the early days of Kusama and Polkadot, treasury funds were used inefficiently: mainly because of the need for off-chain mechanisms to design and schedule treasury proposals, but also because of the difficulty of quickly coordinating the council’s activities to accommodate both To receive treasury funds move. This is now changing with new spending mechanisms.
Originally foreseen in the Kusama Network, both councils have long sought new ways to scale their activities and fund new projects that add value to the community. The original design provided two ways to spend state coffers:
Tilting: Tips can be suggested by anyone who owns KSM or DOT (the native tokens on the networks) and are endorsed by council members. Tips have no fixed value: the final value is determined based on the median of all tips given by city councils. We have used this mechanism to reward the work of community members who have developed something valuable or creative, assisted in education by translating resources, supported evangelism efforts on social media, or even made branded ceramics! You can find more information on our Wiki page.
Expenditure proposals: The Treasury Department is also used to fund spending proposals submitted by community members. These must be approved by the council and aim to develop ideas that give the network traction, including maintaining the infrastructure, security measures and marketing activities. Learn about some of the projects created with funding from the Kusama Treasury and the first teams built with support from the Polkadot Treasury.
The discussion about the need for new mechanisms to keep the Treasury active came from within the Kusama community itself: the general feeling was that council members’ curation skills have practical limits: while individual council members may have the necessary expertise to create a make proper assessment of activities This is unlikely to be the case in the Treasury Department’s proposals for the majority of members. An open discussion on the subject led to a proposal to expand the treasury palette and provide funding for projects that token holders consider important.
New Horizons
One of the proposed new mechanisms is a Treasury Bounty Mechanism (originally described here) with the aim of avoiding one of the stagnating factors in government spending: Project curation. This is achieved by delegating the curation of spending proposals to an expert named a curator. This mechanism has now been added to the Treasury palette and can be used by KSM and DOT holders.
Bounty expenses include an applicant, reward, description, and curator. The trustees are selected by the council after the bounty proposal is approved and funded. Curators can be defined as addresses with agencies through a part of the Treasury, with the aim of correcting a bug or a security gap or overseeing a series of tasks related to a specific topic.
With this in mind, we introduce two-stage approval mechanism. First, the council approves the allocation of bounties. Second, the office decides that a curator will take responsibility for the assignment: as soon as the curator accepts the position, he makes a deposit. The bail can be used to punish them for acting maliciously. However, if they successfully get someone to complete the bounty work, they will get their deposit back along with part of the bounty as a reward.
After the bounty proposal is approved by a simple majority of the council and the curator is elected, it becomes one active premium and the amount intended for its payment is locked in the treasury, which is reserved for this purpose only. Each token holder can submit a bounty proposal and set a reward. Similar to the tip mechanism, bounty suggestions require a deposit, which is calculated as a base fee and added to a byte charge per base length.
The curator is expected to have a good track record of the problems the bounty is trying to solve: they should at least be knowledgeable about the issues the bounty deals with and show project management skills or experience. Therefore, competent curators are appointed to ensure effective use of the bounty mechanism.
The curator closes the bounty after all milestones are met. This process delays two payouts: one to the address of the user who completed the tasks and one to the address of the curator.
From curators, bounty proposals, and the role of councilors
By introducing trustees, the council can extend its powers to part of the Treasury without constantly monitoring how funds are being spent. By selecting a curator, the community will propose a specific user or group of users (multisig) to manage funds that can only be used to pay for the fulfillment of the specific objectives contained in the bounty proposal. With this in mind, and by approving multiple bounties with different curators, the council creates virtual high-level budgets. If the bounty is curated by a multisig, the result will be similar to a topic-based mini-advice: A group of users who monitor the execution of tasks on a specific topic and reward those who do them.
The new mechanism is based on the idea that initiative, personal responsibility and responsibility come from the individual. By separating curatorial duties from other council responsibilities, the number of concurrent activities is scaled while the Treasury Department keeps moving.
The Treasury allows many active bounties and curators at the same time. This new mechanism also gives the curators the freedom to work autonomously with the teams involved on the preferred direction of the tasks and to arrange the payment afterwards. To further improve their work, curators can ask the council or other contributors to top up the active award to extend the work done. In the future, it is expected that they will be able to sub-award the allocation and work with different teams if necessary.
However, certain limits are set to avoid bad behavior: both the Kusama and Polkadot Councils are allowed to cancel payments or unassign the curator during the delayed payout period (the time between the award of the bounty and the claim being made) to the earmarked funds if they do not meet expectations. Finally, they should be held accountable if they wish to take responsibility for managing community funds.
Join the Kusama community and take advantage of the new Treasury Bounty Spending Mechanism
The new spending mechanism can be used by token holders who wish to help council members manage funds for the benefit of the community. Join the Kusama and Polkadot communities and vote for treasury allocation. The new Bounty expansion complements the ongoing “Building Polkadot” bounty challenge in collaboration with Gitcoin and aims to further integrate the efforts. There are many ways to join the community. Join the discussion on the Kusama Official Telegram and Polkadot Official Telegram Groups and Element channels, or subscribe to the Kusama newsletter. Learn more about Kusama and Polkadot on our website and wiki. Would you like to join the core growth team behind Kusama and Polkadot? Take part in the Ambassador program.